In Search of Possibilities, part 3 of 3
In Search of Possibilities, part 3. (Continued from part 1 and part 2.)
Epilogue Here
Sam and Daniel stood side-by-side next to Colonel O'Neill's infirmary bed, grinning down at their commanding officer. Teal'c stood at the foot of the bed, watching all three of them with that absolutely inscrutable face that meant he was silently laughing.
Colonel O'Neill squinted up at them, his eyes narrowing at their cheerful expressions. "You look amazingly upbeat for two people who fell though a snakehead's vanity mirror and got stuck with yourselves for nine hours," he said sourly.
"Oh, we had fun, sir," Sam said brightly. "We had a lovely conversation with ourselves."
"Our robot selves," Daniel added, sitting down in the chair next to the bed and leaning a comfortable elbow on the colonel's mattress.
"They seemed quite pleasant," Teal'c agreed blandly.
The colonel groaned and thumped his head back against his pillow. "It's bad enough there have to be alternate mes running around all over the universes," he complained. "Do there have to be alternate robot us's, too?"
Sam winced a little. "Actually, sir, your robot self was dead. So was Robot Teal'c." She nodded apologetically at Teal'c, who graced her with a solemn nod of acknowledgement in return.
"...Oh." Colonel O'Neill frowned at this. "And you're so happy about this - why?" he demanded.
"Not about that part, Jack," Daniel assured him. "But they'd been cut off from Earth for three years. I think they might choose to make contact, and that can only be a good thing."
"I don't see why."
"Because they don't deserve to be alone?" Daniel's voice was still light, but Sam recognized the undercurrent of menace that lurked just around the corner of the conversation. The colonel evidently sensed it as well, because he hastily changed the subject.
"So, you two are back in the right universe. What happened in the lab? Have you made your report to General Hammond yet?"
"Yes, sir," Sam replied, slipping into formal mode. "There was very little that we could use from a military or tactical standpoint, but we were able to retrieve quite a bit of information about the quantum mirror itself."
"The quantum mirror that we destroyed two years ago?" the colonel asked pointedly. "And that's useful how, exactly?"
"Well, Jack, there's obviously more than one mirror," Daniel said reasonably. "And getting hold of Atropus' data crystals will keep Sam's division busy for years to come."
"Wait a second." Colonel O'Neill held up a hand, frowning. "I still don't understand how you managed to get in when the two of you messed up the knob thingies."
"It was very simple, O'Neill," Teal'c cut in, smoothly interrupting Daniel's protest before it could be launched. "Once the thunderstorm had ceased, I requisitioned a second winch and generator and the assistance of SG-3. Colonel Reynolds lowered me into the shaft until I was directly above the quantum mirror -"
"Are you crazy?" the colonel demanded.
Teal'c merely cocked an eyebrow at him. "From there," he continued, unperturbed, "it was relatively simple to maneuver myself through the broken wall of the shaft into the laboratory itself. I made my way to the entrance of the laboratory and found a simple locking mechanism, which I released to open the door."
"Huh." The colonel blinked at the prosaic solution. "And the only things in there were the snakehead's research on the mirror?"
"It'll take quite a while to go through the data crystals, sir," Sam offered. "There might be information on other subjects as well."
"No space guns?"
"No, Jack," Daniel said patiently. "No space guns." He grinned at the colonel. "On the other hand, your big honkin' spaceship has big honkin' space guns, so the month isn't a total loss, right?"
"I guess," the colonel sighed, staring moodily at his wrapped knee. "This knee's gonna complicate things, though."
"I understand that Doctor Fraiser plans to release you in time for our mission to destroy Tanith, O'Neill. Is that not the case?"
"Oh, it is." The colonel avoided comment on the way Teal'c chose to categorize their mission to move the Tok'ra to a new base. "But it's still a pain in the... mitka."
"I thought it was the knee, sir," Sam said before she could stop herself. Teal'c's face became even more expressionless, which for him was the equivalent of outright sniggering.
Colonel O'Neill glared at her, then at Teal'c, and then at Daniel, who wasn't even trying to hide his smile. "Explain something to me," he groused. "You two fall through a quantum mirror and come back here without a scratch. Laughing Boy here -" He pointed an accusing finger at Teal'c, who raised both brows this time and didn't bother to refute the charge, "- gets hit by lightning, and keeps right on ticking..."
"I was not, in fact, struck by lightning," Teal'c said calmly. "I was merely temporarily stunned by being in close proximity to a lightning blast."
The colonel's voice rose to override this. "And I'm the one stuck in the infirmary with Midget Mengele as my -"
"You were saying, Colonel?"
Four heads whipped around to stare at Janet Fraiser, who had the uncanny ability to move silently when it suited her, despite her non-regulation heels. Teal'c bowed his head in greeting; Daniel sat up a little straighter in his chair, his hand covering his mouth to hide his smirk; and Colonel O'Neill pasted a weak smile on his face, his mind clearly racing in an attempt to salvage the situation. Hiding a grin of her own, Sam murmured something noncommittal and escaped the infirmary.
She wandered back toward her lab, glad to be walking the clean, sterile halls of the SGC instead of sitting in a patch of grass and flowers on the other side of the mirror. She wondered, with a shiver of unease, how much her robot double would have given for the chance to be doing the same.
"Sam?"
She turned at the sound of Daniel's voice, stopping to wait for him as he strode toward her, his face alight with warmth.
"You doing okay?" He seemed to be studying her face carefully.
"Yeah." She eyed him. "Looks like you are, too." That tense undercurrent of unhappiness, which had dogged him from the moment he learned about their doubles' deaths, was gone. She remembered that final exchange he'd had with Robot Daniel on the other side of the mirror, and she understood how much it had meant to him to be able to offer that other Daniel a tangible token of hope.
"Has anyone complained about the loss of equipment?" she asked.
Daniel gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Considering everything else that got lost on the mission? No one is asking any questions." His mouth quirked into a conspiratorial grin. "Besides, Daniel Jackson still has possession of it. It's just a different Daniel, that's all."
"Just a different Daniel," she repeated thoughtfully. "I guess so."
"Anyway, Janet kicked us all out of the infirmary, so I thought I'd join you and see what goodies we got from Atropus' secret lair." He waggled his eyebrows at her for emphasis.
She chuckled. "Sounds good to me. Come on."
She fell easily into comfortable conversation with him as the two of them walked to her lab, making straight for her computer to access the data they'd copied from Atropus' lab. But her mind kept circling back to Daniel's passionate defense of their counterparts, and wondering just where she stood after the day's experiences.
"Daniel," she said suddenly, interrupting him mid-flow. "After what happened today..."
"Yes, Sam?"
The colonel had always asserted that the robots were machines, nothing more. Even after the robots in their universe had... Died? Deactivated? Even then, despite a softening in his attitude, he still insisted that they hadn't truly been alive.
Daniel had been furious at the time. She'd wondered, at that chaotic debriefing after Juna, if his anger was truly over the robots' fate, or a thin mask for his terror at not being there when they were all so close to death. Now, after watching that final exchange between Daniel and his robotic counterpart, she was no longer in any doubt.
"I was thinking about Teal'c," she said, circling around the subject. "I remember your report about what Teal'c said in that other reality, when we were trying to help the SGA contact the Asgard."
She'd been a little taken aback, at the time, to read of his calm, almost ruthless assessment, at the precise definitions of self that allowed Teal'c to fire on his doppelganger without even blinking.
"After he shot the other Teal'c? 'Ours is the only reality of consequence,'" Daniel quoted. He tipped his head down, glancing at her over the frames of his glasses. "It's the way his mind works, Sam. It doesn't have to mean anything else."
Her gaze slanted away from him. He'd understood her oblique reference, all right. Like her, he seemed to assume that in Teal'c's cool mind of black-and-white, friend-or-foe, he considered himself to be the only Teal'c of consequence in their own reality, too.
"So where does that leave you?" he prompted gently, drawing her to look back at him.
Where did that leave her? The scientist who marveled at the workings of an android far beyond their capability to reverse-engineer, the astrophysicist who thought in numbers and absolutes? How was she to think of their robot doubles now - those they'd handed to Harlan in this universe for burial, and those they'd left with a glimmer of hope in a dimension just a few heartbeats away?
"I think..." she started, then stopped.
She couldn't understand the robots, she knew. She couldn't define them, categorize them, classify them as real or not.
She never would be able to, either.
With a sudden lightening of her heart, she realized that she rather liked it that way. Difficult challenges were good things, after all.
"I think it's time for chocolate," she announced. Opening a drawer, she drew out two Snickers bars from her private stash. She handed one to Daniel and saluted him with the other. "To absent friends," she said, a wealth of meaning in her eyes.
He took the proffered candy bar gravely, and saluted her in return. "To absent Sams and Daniels," he agreed, and tore the wrapper open.
***
Epilogue There
Stars were appearing in the sky, and the moons were rising, when Sam and Daniel returned to the power plant, some six hours before their power reserves would drop to dangerous levels. They greeted Harlan, then went to their resting area for some privacy. They sat down and simply looked at each other for several minutes.
"We have a decision to make," Sam said, finally breaking the silence. "Major Sam and I spent a lot of time discussing the Air Force side of things. Daniel, if that Presidential order for our... dissection was never revoked, we could find ourselves literally under the microscope."
"An argument for our sentience wouldn't help?"
"I'm honestly not sure which way would be worse, Daniel - if we really are the original SG-1, or if we're not."
He gave her a level stare. "But you do agree that we're fully sentient - fully real - whether or not events here were the same as events there. Don't you?"
For three long, agonizing heartbeats, Sam didn't answer. Then she straightened her shoulders, and returned his steady gaze. "Yes," she said simply. "I do."
He breathed again. "I'm glad," he told her.
Quiet descended again, until Sam returned to the burning topic of the moment. "So. Do we want to try to make contact again?"
"I agree it's a risk." Daniel shifted restlessly. "But the other Daniel pointed out that if everything in both universes is the same, except for Jack and Teal'c surviving and our discovery of the switch at the very beginning, then Juna is now suffering under Cronus' rule, and the SGC has no idea."
"The SGC would want to know about Cronus' movements," Sam said, considering.
"And maybe they can help liberate the people of Juna again."
Sam smiled at him. "Yes. There's that, too."
"Well." Daniel shifted again. "I gave me - I mean, I gave myself..." Sam had started snickering at his fumbling attempts at coherency, and he picked up one of his spare shirts and lobbed it at her. She caught it and primly started folding it with military precision.
"Okay." Daniel took a deep breath and tried again. "The other Daniel gave me something. Two things. He thought we might want to use them."
He pulled the two items out of his pocket, and saw Sam's eyes widen with surprise. The first was a folded slip of paper, but it was the second object that made her gasp and drop his shirt.
A radio.
"We can try to dial Earth again." Daniel licked his lips. "There won't be any visual, of course, but we can at least communicate via the radio. Find out if anyone is home. And this -" He unfolded the paper and showed Sam the symbols that SG-1 Daniel had hurriedly scribbled down right before his departure. "The SGC in their universe established something they called the 'Alpha Site,' although the other me did add that a different universe called it the 'Beta Site.' That's... probably not very important."
"No," Sam agreed, her voice almost dream-like. "So if we can't get through to Earth, we can try the Alpha Site instead?"
"If we want."
If we want.
They didn't need their internal radios to communicate. The look in each other's eyes was more than enough.
As one, they rose and made their way to the section that housed the Stargate. It was dark here now, as they slowly continued to shut down everything in the plant that wasn't either directly connected to the power source or used for their living quarters. That didn't matter, though. Thanks to Harlan, they had no trouble seeing in the dark.
But now, there was a glimmer of light. And no matter the outcome, Daniel knew he was glad they'd come this far.
He stood in front of the DHD, Sam at his side. His fingers skimmed lightly over the glyphs, then poised over the first one for Earth. He hesitated and turned Sam, raising his brows questioningly.
She nodded, her smile a little shaky. "Do it," she said.
Daniel pressed down hard on that first glyph, seeing it light up. With his gaze fully focused on the DHD, he heard the first chevron on the Stargate lock into place.
Auriga.
Cetus.
Centaurus.
Cancer.
Scutum.
Eridanus.
He hesitated once more at the point of origin, looking up at Sam. She nodded again, her smile no longer tremulous and her eyes bright and clear.
He hit the final glyph. The seventh chevron lit.
Sam's hand squeezed his shoulder, and he reached out to press the central globe.
end
niamaea wanted: (Our) Daniel and Sam in an alternate universe (quantum mirror or however else it could happen), friendship.
She didn’t want: Character death, noncon, excessive angst (some is fine), Jack/Sam.
Some characters died, but not not the ones Niamaea meant. And some angst turned out to be inevitable. I hope Niamaea will forgive me. :)
Epilogue Here
Sam and Daniel stood side-by-side next to Colonel O'Neill's infirmary bed, grinning down at their commanding officer. Teal'c stood at the foot of the bed, watching all three of them with that absolutely inscrutable face that meant he was silently laughing.
Colonel O'Neill squinted up at them, his eyes narrowing at their cheerful expressions. "You look amazingly upbeat for two people who fell though a snakehead's vanity mirror and got stuck with yourselves for nine hours," he said sourly.
"Oh, we had fun, sir," Sam said brightly. "We had a lovely conversation with ourselves."
"Our robot selves," Daniel added, sitting down in the chair next to the bed and leaning a comfortable elbow on the colonel's mattress.
"They seemed quite pleasant," Teal'c agreed blandly.
The colonel groaned and thumped his head back against his pillow. "It's bad enough there have to be alternate mes running around all over the universes," he complained. "Do there have to be alternate robot us's, too?"
Sam winced a little. "Actually, sir, your robot self was dead. So was Robot Teal'c." She nodded apologetically at Teal'c, who graced her with a solemn nod of acknowledgement in return.
"...Oh." Colonel O'Neill frowned at this. "And you're so happy about this - why?" he demanded.
"Not about that part, Jack," Daniel assured him. "But they'd been cut off from Earth for three years. I think they might choose to make contact, and that can only be a good thing."
"I don't see why."
"Because they don't deserve to be alone?" Daniel's voice was still light, but Sam recognized the undercurrent of menace that lurked just around the corner of the conversation. The colonel evidently sensed it as well, because he hastily changed the subject.
"So, you two are back in the right universe. What happened in the lab? Have you made your report to General Hammond yet?"
"Yes, sir," Sam replied, slipping into formal mode. "There was very little that we could use from a military or tactical standpoint, but we were able to retrieve quite a bit of information about the quantum mirror itself."
"The quantum mirror that we destroyed two years ago?" the colonel asked pointedly. "And that's useful how, exactly?"
"Well, Jack, there's obviously more than one mirror," Daniel said reasonably. "And getting hold of Atropus' data crystals will keep Sam's division busy for years to come."
"Wait a second." Colonel O'Neill held up a hand, frowning. "I still don't understand how you managed to get in when the two of you messed up the knob thingies."
"It was very simple, O'Neill," Teal'c cut in, smoothly interrupting Daniel's protest before it could be launched. "Once the thunderstorm had ceased, I requisitioned a second winch and generator and the assistance of SG-3. Colonel Reynolds lowered me into the shaft until I was directly above the quantum mirror -"
"Are you crazy?" the colonel demanded.
Teal'c merely cocked an eyebrow at him. "From there," he continued, unperturbed, "it was relatively simple to maneuver myself through the broken wall of the shaft into the laboratory itself. I made my way to the entrance of the laboratory and found a simple locking mechanism, which I released to open the door."
"Huh." The colonel blinked at the prosaic solution. "And the only things in there were the snakehead's research on the mirror?"
"It'll take quite a while to go through the data crystals, sir," Sam offered. "There might be information on other subjects as well."
"No space guns?"
"No, Jack," Daniel said patiently. "No space guns." He grinned at the colonel. "On the other hand, your big honkin' spaceship has big honkin' space guns, so the month isn't a total loss, right?"
"I guess," the colonel sighed, staring moodily at his wrapped knee. "This knee's gonna complicate things, though."
"I understand that Doctor Fraiser plans to release you in time for our mission to destroy Tanith, O'Neill. Is that not the case?"
"Oh, it is." The colonel avoided comment on the way Teal'c chose to categorize their mission to move the Tok'ra to a new base. "But it's still a pain in the... mitka."
"I thought it was the knee, sir," Sam said before she could stop herself. Teal'c's face became even more expressionless, which for him was the equivalent of outright sniggering.
Colonel O'Neill glared at her, then at Teal'c, and then at Daniel, who wasn't even trying to hide his smile. "Explain something to me," he groused. "You two fall through a quantum mirror and come back here without a scratch. Laughing Boy here -" He pointed an accusing finger at Teal'c, who raised both brows this time and didn't bother to refute the charge, "- gets hit by lightning, and keeps right on ticking..."
"I was not, in fact, struck by lightning," Teal'c said calmly. "I was merely temporarily stunned by being in close proximity to a lightning blast."
The colonel's voice rose to override this. "And I'm the one stuck in the infirmary with Midget Mengele as my -"
"You were saying, Colonel?"
Four heads whipped around to stare at Janet Fraiser, who had the uncanny ability to move silently when it suited her, despite her non-regulation heels. Teal'c bowed his head in greeting; Daniel sat up a little straighter in his chair, his hand covering his mouth to hide his smirk; and Colonel O'Neill pasted a weak smile on his face, his mind clearly racing in an attempt to salvage the situation. Hiding a grin of her own, Sam murmured something noncommittal and escaped the infirmary.
She wandered back toward her lab, glad to be walking the clean, sterile halls of the SGC instead of sitting in a patch of grass and flowers on the other side of the mirror. She wondered, with a shiver of unease, how much her robot double would have given for the chance to be doing the same.
"Sam?"
She turned at the sound of Daniel's voice, stopping to wait for him as he strode toward her, his face alight with warmth.
"You doing okay?" He seemed to be studying her face carefully.
"Yeah." She eyed him. "Looks like you are, too." That tense undercurrent of unhappiness, which had dogged him from the moment he learned about their doubles' deaths, was gone. She remembered that final exchange he'd had with Robot Daniel on the other side of the mirror, and she understood how much it had meant to him to be able to offer that other Daniel a tangible token of hope.
"Has anyone complained about the loss of equipment?" she asked.
Daniel gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Considering everything else that got lost on the mission? No one is asking any questions." His mouth quirked into a conspiratorial grin. "Besides, Daniel Jackson still has possession of it. It's just a different Daniel, that's all."
"Just a different Daniel," she repeated thoughtfully. "I guess so."
"Anyway, Janet kicked us all out of the infirmary, so I thought I'd join you and see what goodies we got from Atropus' secret lair." He waggled his eyebrows at her for emphasis.
She chuckled. "Sounds good to me. Come on."
She fell easily into comfortable conversation with him as the two of them walked to her lab, making straight for her computer to access the data they'd copied from Atropus' lab. But her mind kept circling back to Daniel's passionate defense of their counterparts, and wondering just where she stood after the day's experiences.
"Daniel," she said suddenly, interrupting him mid-flow. "After what happened today..."
"Yes, Sam?"
The colonel had always asserted that the robots were machines, nothing more. Even after the robots in their universe had... Died? Deactivated? Even then, despite a softening in his attitude, he still insisted that they hadn't truly been alive.
Daniel had been furious at the time. She'd wondered, at that chaotic debriefing after Juna, if his anger was truly over the robots' fate, or a thin mask for his terror at not being there when they were all so close to death. Now, after watching that final exchange between Daniel and his robotic counterpart, she was no longer in any doubt.
"I was thinking about Teal'c," she said, circling around the subject. "I remember your report about what Teal'c said in that other reality, when we were trying to help the SGA contact the Asgard."
She'd been a little taken aback, at the time, to read of his calm, almost ruthless assessment, at the precise definitions of self that allowed Teal'c to fire on his doppelganger without even blinking.
"After he shot the other Teal'c? 'Ours is the only reality of consequence,'" Daniel quoted. He tipped his head down, glancing at her over the frames of his glasses. "It's the way his mind works, Sam. It doesn't have to mean anything else."
Her gaze slanted away from him. He'd understood her oblique reference, all right. Like her, he seemed to assume that in Teal'c's cool mind of black-and-white, friend-or-foe, he considered himself to be the only Teal'c of consequence in their own reality, too.
"So where does that leave you?" he prompted gently, drawing her to look back at him.
Where did that leave her? The scientist who marveled at the workings of an android far beyond their capability to reverse-engineer, the astrophysicist who thought in numbers and absolutes? How was she to think of their robot doubles now - those they'd handed to Harlan in this universe for burial, and those they'd left with a glimmer of hope in a dimension just a few heartbeats away?
"I think..." she started, then stopped.
She couldn't understand the robots, she knew. She couldn't define them, categorize them, classify them as real or not.
She never would be able to, either.
With a sudden lightening of her heart, she realized that she rather liked it that way. Difficult challenges were good things, after all.
"I think it's time for chocolate," she announced. Opening a drawer, she drew out two Snickers bars from her private stash. She handed one to Daniel and saluted him with the other. "To absent friends," she said, a wealth of meaning in her eyes.
He took the proffered candy bar gravely, and saluted her in return. "To absent Sams and Daniels," he agreed, and tore the wrapper open.
***
Epilogue There
Stars were appearing in the sky, and the moons were rising, when Sam and Daniel returned to the power plant, some six hours before their power reserves would drop to dangerous levels. They greeted Harlan, then went to their resting area for some privacy. They sat down and simply looked at each other for several minutes.
"We have a decision to make," Sam said, finally breaking the silence. "Major Sam and I spent a lot of time discussing the Air Force side of things. Daniel, if that Presidential order for our... dissection was never revoked, we could find ourselves literally under the microscope."
"An argument for our sentience wouldn't help?"
"I'm honestly not sure which way would be worse, Daniel - if we really are the original SG-1, or if we're not."
He gave her a level stare. "But you do agree that we're fully sentient - fully real - whether or not events here were the same as events there. Don't you?"
For three long, agonizing heartbeats, Sam didn't answer. Then she straightened her shoulders, and returned his steady gaze. "Yes," she said simply. "I do."
He breathed again. "I'm glad," he told her.
Quiet descended again, until Sam returned to the burning topic of the moment. "So. Do we want to try to make contact again?"
"I agree it's a risk." Daniel shifted restlessly. "But the other Daniel pointed out that if everything in both universes is the same, except for Jack and Teal'c surviving and our discovery of the switch at the very beginning, then Juna is now suffering under Cronus' rule, and the SGC has no idea."
"The SGC would want to know about Cronus' movements," Sam said, considering.
"And maybe they can help liberate the people of Juna again."
Sam smiled at him. "Yes. There's that, too."
"Well." Daniel shifted again. "I gave me - I mean, I gave myself..." Sam had started snickering at his fumbling attempts at coherency, and he picked up one of his spare shirts and lobbed it at her. She caught it and primly started folding it with military precision.
"Okay." Daniel took a deep breath and tried again. "The other Daniel gave me something. Two things. He thought we might want to use them."
He pulled the two items out of his pocket, and saw Sam's eyes widen with surprise. The first was a folded slip of paper, but it was the second object that made her gasp and drop his shirt.
A radio.
"We can try to dial Earth again." Daniel licked his lips. "There won't be any visual, of course, but we can at least communicate via the radio. Find out if anyone is home. And this -" He unfolded the paper and showed Sam the symbols that SG-1 Daniel had hurriedly scribbled down right before his departure. "The SGC in their universe established something they called the 'Alpha Site,' although the other me did add that a different universe called it the 'Beta Site.' That's... probably not very important."
"No," Sam agreed, her voice almost dream-like. "So if we can't get through to Earth, we can try the Alpha Site instead?"
"If we want."
If we want.
They didn't need their internal radios to communicate. The look in each other's eyes was more than enough.
As one, they rose and made their way to the section that housed the Stargate. It was dark here now, as they slowly continued to shut down everything in the plant that wasn't either directly connected to the power source or used for their living quarters. That didn't matter, though. Thanks to Harlan, they had no trouble seeing in the dark.
But now, there was a glimmer of light. And no matter the outcome, Daniel knew he was glad they'd come this far.
He stood in front of the DHD, Sam at his side. His fingers skimmed lightly over the glyphs, then poised over the first one for Earth. He hesitated and turned Sam, raising his brows questioningly.
She nodded, her smile a little shaky. "Do it," she said.
Daniel pressed down hard on that first glyph, seeing it light up. With his gaze fully focused on the DHD, he heard the first chevron on the Stargate lock into place.
Auriga.
Cetus.
Centaurus.
Cancer.
Scutum.
Eridanus.
He hesitated once more at the point of origin, looking up at Sam. She nodded again, her smile no longer tremulous and her eyes bright and clear.
He hit the final glyph. The seventh chevron lit.
Sam's hand squeezed his shoulder, and he reached out to press the central globe.
end
niamaea wanted: (Our) Daniel and Sam in an alternate universe (quantum mirror or however else it could happen), friendship.
She didn’t want: Character death, noncon, excessive angst (some is fine), Jack/Sam.
Some characters died, but not not the ones Niamaea meant. And some angst turned out to be inevitable. I hope Niamaea will forgive me. :)